BlackMagic Pocket Cinema Camera

     Hey Everyone! Happy Holidays! Yep, that is correct! This will be the final blog of 2015! It's amazing how quick this year went by. Anyways, for this week's reflective response, I will be talking about the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera! Our class recently bought two of these BMPCC's, along with two different lenses. A few classes ago, Kaycee and I and a few other classmates downloaded the manual for the BMPCC, and started to read and test the camera. The BMPCC is really small and portable, being a 'pocket' camera and all. However, the lens Mr. M put on it was pretty large compared to the body. In fact, it was more expensive than the body itself! One of the lens can zoom, but the other can not, it's fixed. Kaycee and I got to try out the fixed lens on the body, and it's really neat. It can focus on one thing, keeping it really sharp, while compressing the background. Also, on the camera body itself is a button called 'FOCUS'. When you click on the button, it auto-focuses the shot. Another feature is called 'Focus-Peaking' and is activated through settings and when you double click the focus button. It makes it so whatever is in focus is highlighted in green, and it makes the sharp quality stay in focus. Of course, the green only appears on the LCD screen, and doesn't actually affect your shot. By using the focus-peaking option, you can make sure that what you want to be focused, is focused. Next to the focus button is a button called 'IRIS'. When you click the iris button once, the camera will automatically set your exposure, based on the highlights and shadows of your shot. Of course, you can always set your aperture manually, using the up and down arrows. Speaking of adjusting your settings manually, the BMPCC doesn't have any automatic settings. Therefore, everything has to be set manually: ISO, White Balance, Shutter Angle, and other things like that. Your ISO should be greater when there isn't much available light, vice versa. (However, do note that a high ISO comes with noise like grain.) So, your ISO should be low when there is a lot of available light. For the white balance, the BMPCC offers 6 presets, 3200K, 4500K, 5000k, 5600k, 6500k, and 7500k. 3200k is good when shooting under tungsten lights, 4500k for florescent lights, and 5000k, 5600k, 6500k, and 7500k for other daylights or time of day. Mr. M even said that it could shoot really well under low light! To actually record, on the top of the body is a big red button. To the left of the record button are playback buttons, to play or skip clips. Also, the body of the BMPCC has an audio input and a headphone jack! So you can actually hook up a mic and monitor it, without a Tascam or a Dxa-Slr mini! When we were testing it out, we noticed that there wasn't anyplace to screw on a mic though, so maybe our class should get a shoe mount put onto it or something. Also, the battery doesn't last very long. I remember Mr. M saying that the length shooting time the battery could take was around 40 minutes, but by the end of that class, the battery that was once full was almost drained. To sum everything up, I am really excited to learn more about the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera, and hopefully get to use it! Adjusting the settings seems tedious, and will also require me to do some studying on manual settings. To read the manual, you can click here. To go to the actual site, you can click here. Below is a video I found that shot RAW footage from the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera. I enjoyed the sharp images. Hope you will too. Well, that is it for this week's reflective response! Thanks for reading! Bye!